An audio coding and decoding technology according to the related art enabled a user to passively listen to audio contents. Accordingly, there has been a demand of an apparatus and method for coding and decoding a plurality of audio objects constituted of different channels in order to enable a user to consume various audio objects by combining one audio-contexts using various methods through controlling each of audio objects constituted of different channels according to the user's needs.
As the related art, a spatial audio coding (SAC) was introduced. The SAC is a technology for expressing multi-channel audio signal as a down mixed mono signal or a down mixed stereo signal and a spatial cue, transmitting and restoring the multi-channel audio signal. Based on the SAC, high quality multi-channel audio signal can be transmitted at a low bit rate.
However, the SAC cannot code and decode multi-channel multi-object audio signal, for example, an audio signal including various objects each constituted of different channels such as mono, stereo, and 5.1 channels because the SAC is a technology for coding and decoding an single-object audio signal although the audio signal is constituted of multiple channels.
As another related art, a binaural cue coding (BCC) was introduced. The BCC can code and decode multi-object audio signal. However, the BCC cannot code and decode multi-object audio signal constituted of various channels except a mono channel because audio objects were limited to audio objects formed with a mono channel in the BCC.
As described above, the audio signal coding and decoding technology according to the related art cannot code and decode multi-object audio signal constituted of various channels because they was designed to code and decode multi-object signal constituted of a single channel or single-object audio signal with multi-channels. Therefore, a user must passively listen to audio context according to the audio signal coding and decoding technology according to the related art.
Therefore, there has been a demand of an apparatus and method for coding and decoding a plurality of audio objects constituted of various channels in order to consume various audio objects by mixing one audio-contents using various methods through controlling each of audio objects each having different channels according to the user's needs.